Apple teases Black Friday; where to look for better deals

Apple (s aapl) posted its teaser on Tuesday for its upcoming Black Friday sale. The teaser is heavy on the tease and light on the info, telling shoppers only that Apple will indeed hold a “one-day shopping event” on Friday, Nov. 25. No word on pricing, featured products or anything else for that matter.

While the idea of a sale at Apple, where sales are seldom seen, is tantalizing, if history is any indication, there’s no real reason to get too excited about Apple’s Black Friday plans. Last year, for instance, discounts were in the order of around 8 percent across its product lines. In other words, you’d save about $100 on items over $1,000, and much less on cheaper items like iPods. Not bad, but not great; generally people can get similar discounts using education or business purchasing discounts.

Advertisement

You can do better. There are lots of sites out there that will have deals that make sure your money goes further on Apple products on Friday. One recurring favorite is MacMall, which often offers discounts at least as steep as those offered by Apple itself, and often beats the official prices by at least a few dollars. Amazon (s amzn) is another place to check for bigger reductions, especially since it offers access to many partner stores, as is MacConnection, which already has some decent sales running.

It’s even worth keeping an eye on Best Buy(s bby), which is apparently offering $150 off MacBook Pro and iMac devices this year, as well as $100 iTunes cards for only $80.

Don’t get me wrong. For Apple to loosen its tight grip on pricing enough to let you save even a few dollars on any of its products is reason enough to pick up that new MacBook you’ve been dreaming about, but make sure you can’t get a better deal elsewhere first; Apple isn’t running out of its own products anytime soon.